Julia Klöckner

Julia Klöckner (born 16 December 1972 in Bad Kreuznach) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been President of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025. The presidency is the second-highest office of state in the Federal Republic. She is the fourth woman to hold it, after Annemarie Renger, Rita Süssmuth and Bärbel Bas, and the first to succeed another woman.

She grew up on her family's vineyard in the Nahe region of Rhineland-Palatinate and is Roman Catholic. After the Abitur in 1992 at the Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer in Bad Kreuznach, she studied theology, political science and pedagogy at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz from 1992 to 1998, taking a Magister and the state examination in religion and social studies. From 1994 to 1996 she was Nahe Wine Queen and German Wine Queen. She then worked in journalism: as a freelance contributor to Südwestrundfunk television in Mainz from 1998 to 2002, during a traineeship from 1998 to 2000, as an editor of the magazine weinwelt from 2000 to 2002, and as editor-in-chief of Sommelier-Magazin from 2001 to 2009. The Bundestag biography, drawn from her own disclosures, also names her as initiator of the Roman Herzog Media Prize for consumer journalism.

Klöckner sat in the Bundestag from 2002 to 2011 and again from 2021. From 2009 to 2011 she was parliamentary state secretary to the federal minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, and from 2018 to 2021 she was herself Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture in the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In Rhineland-Palatinate she chaired the CDU from 2010 to 2022 and the party's Landtag group from 2011 to 2018. She was the CDU's lead candidate for the state premiership in 2011 and 2016 and did not win either election. At federal party level she was a deputy CDU chair from 2012 to 2022 and federal treasurer from 2022 to 2025. From 2021 to 2025 she was economic-policy spokesperson of the CDU/CSU Bundestag group. In the 2025 federal election she won constituency 200 (Kreuznach) with 32.3 percent of the first votes.

The 21st Bundestag elected her president by secret ballot on 25 March 2025, with 382 votes in favour, 204 against and 31 abstentions; the required majority was 316 of 630 members. In her inaugural speech she said she would carry out the office impartially, calmly and without timidity, and that she would attend both to speaking times and to the tone of debate. The president chairs plenary sittings, watches over parliamentary rules and represents the Bundestag externally.

CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, who nominated her, described parliament as the heart of democracy and the president's task as protecting it. Environmental organisations had criticised her years as agriculture minister as ineffective and too close to the food industry, including a 2019 social-media video filmed with the head of Nestlé in Germany. Before taking the chair she gave up the CDU treasurership after the group Lobbycontrol pointed out that the Bundestag president oversees the rules on party donations.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Julia Klöckner was born on 16 December 1972 in Bad Kreuznach and is a Roman Catholic. She grew up with her older brother, Stephan, on the winery of their parents, Aloys and Doris Klöckner, in Guldental, a winegrowing municipality on the Nahe in Rhineland-Palatinate, north of Bad Kreuznach. A biographical article by Kathrin Zehender for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation describes the home as Christian but not shaped by party politics, although farming gave the family a degree of proximity to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The estate's own account says that the family has planted vines and made wine for about 400 years, selling wine in barrel until bottled direct sales began in the late 1960s. Aloys Klöckner, a trained viticultural engineer, built a new farm at the edge of the village rather than in its centre; since 1999 Stephan Klöckner, also a viticultural engineer, has run Weingut Aloys Klöckner with his wife, Simone. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in 2016 that she grew up on a winery and could drive a tractor at 14. Der Spiegel, in a February 2016 campaign profile, reported that she later travelled as a wine queen and that the image of the "simple vintner's daughter from the provinces" stayed with her for a long time.

In 1992 she completed the Abitur at the Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer in Bad Kreuznach. On her website she lists social studies, Latin and German as her advanced courses (Leistungskurse).

University studies

From 1992 to 1998 Klöckner studied Catholic theology, political science and education (Pädagogik) at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In 1998 she received the Magister Artium in theology, political science and pedagogy and passed the state examination (Staatsexamen) in religion and social studies (Sozialkunde). Her website gives the Magister thesis as Struktur und Entwicklung der europäischen Weinmarktordnung ("Structure and Development of the European Wine Market Organisation"). The wine magazine Vinum has reported the political-science thesis title as Struktur und Entwicklung der europäischen Weinmarktpolitik ("Structure and Development of European Wine-Market Policy").

After her intermediate examination she taught Catholic religion, under a special arrangement, at the Pestalozzi Realschule in Wiesbaden-Biebrich. Her interest in parties developed during the degree. In a seminar with the Mainz political scientist Jürgen Falter, students compared basic programmes; assigned the Party of Democratic Socialism and the CDU, she later said that "the PDS drove me into the arms of the CDU," contrasting a society that "grows from the bottom up" with one she described as defined from above. She joined the Junge Union, the Frauen Union and the CDU in 1997, while still a student; Zehender's biography states that she was not yet seeking a political career.

Wine representation and journalism

German Wine Queen

The German Wine Queen (Deutsche Weinkönigin) is the principal one-year representative of German wine. The office in the Federal Republic began in 1949 with Elisabeth Kuhn of the Palatinate. Since 1950 a jury of about 70 people from science and teaching, politics, the wine trade and the media, appointed each year by the Deutsches Weininstitut, has chosen the queen from the regional wine queens, usually in Neustadt an der Weinstraße. The institute, founded in 1949, is the industry's marketing body for the 13 German growing regions. Early queens appeared in dirndl, crown and sceptre; the sceptre became a wine glass in 1967, foreign trips for the institute became regular from 1972, and the obligatory dirndl was dropped in 1988/89. Until 1999 candidates had to be unmarried or come from a wine-growing family. With two wine princesses, the queen is scheduled for about 200 engagements a year in Germany and abroad.

Klöckner came to the title from the Nahe. She had grown up on her family's estate in Guldental, in Rhineland-Palatinate, and was crowned Nahe Wine Queen in 1994 while still a student; the German title followed for 1995/96. Her Bundestag biography lists the two offices as 1994 to 1996. About twenty years later she told the Allgemeine Zeitung that a year meant 200 appointments or more, that she hardly wore the dirndl and often carried the crown, and that the resulting recognition contributed to the Christian Democratic Union asking her to stand for the Bundestag. She later told the Rheinpfalz that photographs often came before any discussion of wine, though she could still speak on the subject.

Editorial work

From 1998 to 2002 she was a freelance contributor in the regional-culture department of Südwestrundfunk television in Mainz, and from 1998 to 2000 she completed a journalistic traineeship. She was then an editor of Meininger's weinwelt (2000–2002) and, from 2001, editor-in-chief of Sommelier-Magazin. On her own account the traineeship was at Meininger in Neustadt and the Journalistenschule Stuttgart, the television work included presenting, and she was part of the launch staff of both magazines. In December 2009 the trade magazine kress reported that Sommelier-Magazin, the organ of the Deutsche Sommelier Union, had been published by Meininger for nine years at a circulation of 5,000.

She kept the editorship after entering the Bundestag in 2002, then left it in December 2009, when Kristine Bäder succeeded her, to concentrate on her post as parliamentary state secretary. She also initiated a consumer-journalism prize endowed by the Markenverband, the association of German branded-goods firms. The association says it created the prize in 2010 under the patronage of former federal president Roman Herzog, and that Klöckner presented it from 2010 to 2019 as its originator. The Markenverband calls it the Verbraucherjournalistenpreis; her Bundestag biography calls it the Roman Herzog media prize for consumer journalism. The first awards, in 2010, totalled 17,500 euros and went to reporting chosen by an independent jury. By 2022 the prize was split between print and television or audio, endowed with 20,000 euros in all, and patronage had passed to the member of parliament Tabea Rößner.

Bundestag membership and early offices

Election to the Bundestag

Klöckner entered the Bundestag at the federal election of 22 September 2002. In constituency 204, Kreuznach, in Rhineland-Palatinate, the Christian Democratic Union received 57,941 first votes, 40.1 percent of the valid vote, behind the Social Democratic Party on 68,079 votes and 47.1 percent. Turnout was 77.9 percent of 191,397 people eligible to vote, and on second votes the SPD led the CDU by 42.3 percent to 36.4 percent. Constituency returns identified Klöckner as the CDU candidate and Fritz Körper as the SPD candidate. She did not win the seat outright. From October 2002 the Bundestag recorded her as a member elected on the CDU state list of Rhineland-Palatinate, with Kreuznach given as her constituency.

In the 15th Bundestag she was a full member of the Committee on Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture and one of the secretaries of the plenary, a deputy member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, and a full member of the study commission on ethics and law in modern medicine. From 2004 she also sat, in an unpaid capacity, on the district council of the rural district of Bad Kreuznach.

Redistribution renumbered the seat as constituency 203 for the election of 18 September 2005. Klöckner won it directly. The CDU took 62,007 first votes, 43.0 percent, to the SPD’s 60,167 and 41.7 percent, a margin of 1,840 votes, on a turnout of 77.0 percent. On second votes the SPD still led in the constituency, 38.5 percent to the CDU’s 33.6 percent. The Bundestag listed her as the directly elected member for Kreuznach. In the 16th term she was again a plenary secretary and a full member of the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, and a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development. By October 2006 the CDU/CSU parliamentary group described her as its commissioner for consumer policy and as a member of the group executive, and she led the consumer-protection working party of the CDU’s federal specialist committee on agricultural policy. On 23 October 2007 the group unanimously elected her deputy chair, and therefore spokesperson, of its working group on food, agriculture and consumer protection. She succeeded Ursula Heinen, who had just become a parliamentary state secretary in the same portfolio, and she remained the group’s consumer-protection commissioner.

Parliamentary State Secretary

At the election of 27 September 2009 the constituency was number 202, still named Kreuznach. Klöckner held the direct mandate. The CDU received 61,167 first votes, 47.0 percent, against 37,332 and 28.7 percent for the SPD; The Left took 8.9 percent, and the Free Democratic Party and the Greens 6.7 percent each. Turnout was 69.9 percent of 190,569 eligible voters. The CDU’s second-vote share in the constituency was 33.1 percent, ahead of the SPD on 26.8 percent. The agriculture ministry described the district as the Bad Kreuznach/Birkenfeld constituency.

The 17th Bundestag elected Angela Merkel chancellor on 28 October 2009, and the same sitting recorded Ilse Aigner of the Christian Social Union as federal minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection. The next day, 29 October, Aigner gave Klöckner her certificate of appointment as parliamentary state secretary in that ministry. Klöckner took the constitutional oath before Aigner and assumed the office immediately. The ministry noted that the office, created in 1967 to support federal ministers in running their departments, is filled by the federal president on a proposal from the chancellor, and that the ministry then had two parliamentary state secretaries.

Klöckner’s parliamentary declaration of paid activity alongside the mandate recorded the state-secretary post as ending on 17 February 2011. She kept her seat until late May. On 27 May 2011 she told the Bundestag that the speech she was giving would be her last there for the time being, and that she meant to keep a promise, made before the election, to move entirely to Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bundestag recorded her departure by resignation on 28 May 2011.

Rhineland-Palatinate CDU leadership

State chair and Landtag

On 25 September 2010 about 400 delegates of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Mainz elected Julia Klöckner chair of the party in Rhineland-Palatinate with 95.2 percent of the votes cast. The 37-year-old Bundestag member, a parliamentary state secretary in the federal agriculture ministry, succeeded Christian Baldauf, chair since 2006, who became a deputy chair. Chancellor Angela Merkel attended and promised help against Minister-President Kurt Beck of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Klöckner said the candidacy was “no flash in the pan” but a firm promise to stay, and she accused Beck’s government of ruling “in the manner of a manor lord.”

The 2011 election sent her into the Landtag for constituency 17, Bad Kreuznach, with 44.4 percent of the valid constituency votes, about 3,500 ahead of the SPD. She took the group chair Baldauf had held since 2006 and led the opposition to the state’s first SPD–Green coalition. On 18 May 2011 the Landtag re-elected Beck with 60 votes, exactly that coalition’s strength, while the CDU held 41 seats. In August 2012 he survived a CDU motion of no confidence over the Nürburgring, after the largely state-owned company behind a leisure park at the circuit filed for insolvency in July. Citing a pancreatic illness, he announced on 28 September 2012 that he would leave the minister-presidency at the start of 2013, and on 16 January 2013 the Landtag elected Malu Dreyer, the social-affairs minister, with 60 of 100 votes.

On 15 March 2016 the 35 CDU deputies unanimously re-elected Klöckner group chair. Asked whether she might remain in Mainz only until the 2017 federal election, she said she had been chosen for the whole legislative period and would also stay state chair. She gave up the group when she became federal food and agriculture minister in March 2018; on 16 March the deputies unanimously elected Baldauf, until then deputy chair, as opposition leader, and her Bad Kreuznach substitute, Helmut Martin, entered the Landtag in her place. She kept the state chairmanship and, on 20 October 2018 in Lahnstein, was confirmed for two further years by 278 of 347 delegates—80.1 percent of votes cast, or 80.8 percent excluding abstentions—down from 85.6 percent, abstentions included, in Wittlich in 2016. On 27 September 2021, after a federal election in which she lost the Kreuznach constituency to the SPD’s Joe Weingarten but returned to the Bundestag on the state list, she told the state executive she would not stand at the leadership vote then set for 20 November. Baldauf was elected her successor on 26 March 2022 in Wittlich, with 271 of 324 delegates; the party reported 84.7 percent, or 83.6 percent if abstentions are counted.

2011 and 2016 election campaigns

The Landtag election of 27 March 2011 came days after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Turnout was 61.8 percent, up 3.6 points on 2006. The SPD took 35.7 percent of the Land votes, down 9.9 points, and 42 seats, 23 of them direct mandates; the CDU rose 2.4 points to 35.2 percent and 41 seats, including 28 direct mandates, ten more than in 2006. Alliance 90/The Greens returned with 15.4 percent and 18 list seats, while the Free Democratic Party on 4.2 percent and The Left on 3.0 percent missed the five-percent hurdle. Beck said the nuclear disaster in Japan had shaped the vote and lifted the Greens; Klöckner called the CDU “back on top,” though Der Spiegel described the result as the conservatives’ second-worst in the state, and she offered the Greens talks, which their lead candidates declined in favour of the SPD. The CDU had campaigned against what it called opaque projects—the Nürburgring, a castle hotel in Bad Bergzabern and the stadium of 1. FC Kaiserslautern—and Klöckner had promised a “contract of reliability,” spending cuts and crosses remaining in classrooms.

On 13 March 2016 she again led the CDU, against Dreyer, in a campaign dominated by refugee arrivals in 2015.

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung she warned of cultural conflict, said newcomers must learn “our fundamental values and our enlightened culture” and must adapt, and accused the red-green government of doing too little for municipalities. Dreyer answered that the law bound refugees and Germans alike, that most refugees she had met wanted to integrate, and that integration courses were a federal duty still unmet. With turnout at 70.4 percent, the SPD won 36.2 percent (771,848 Land votes) and 39 seats, the CDU 31.8 percent (677,507) and 35, the Alternative for Germany 12.6 percent and 14, the FDP 6.2 percent and seven, and the Greens 5.3 percent and six. It was the CDU’s worst Landtag result in the state to that date; Klöckner again won Bad Kreuznach directly. She said the CDU had achieved its aim of voting out red-green and that forming a stable government was Dreyer’s task—“We are here, we are awake”—while Der Spiegel reported a loss of 50,000 CDU voters to the AfD. On 17 May 2016 the SPD, the FDP and the Greens signed a coalition agreement, the first state-level “traffic-light” coalition since one in Bremen had failed 21 years earlier, with three more seats than the CDU and the AfD combined. Klöckner did not become minister-president.

Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture

Appointment and portfolio

On 14 March 2018 Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble administered the oath to the ministers of Angela Merkel's fourth cabinet. The roll named Klöckner, of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, succeeding Christian Schmidt of the Christian Social Union. Under the coalition agreement of the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the ministry was to develop a front-of-pack nutrition label by the summer of 2019. On 8 December 2021 Bundestag President Bärbel Bas swore in Olaf Scholz's cabinet, with Cem Özdemir of Alliance 90/The Greens as agriculture minister.

Food labeling, nutrition and industry relations

The Max Rubner Institute, a federal research body under the ministry, wrote the assessment. Its preliminary report of 21 September 2018 called the Nutri-Score and the Health Star Rating "fundamentally advantageous". After the ministry ordered a revision, a later text appeared on 11 April 2019; the September version stayed unpublished until January 2020. Der Spiegel reported an internal note, released by the consumer group Foodwatch, in which the minister had "expressly asked" that "the greatest confidentiality" surround the study.

Foodwatch had asked for the report in October 2018 under the Freedom of Information Act. The ministry refused in March 2019; after publication the case continued as a declaratory action. On 28 July 2022 the Cologne Administrative Court, in the final judgment 13 K 4645/19, held that access should have been granted. The report was a scientific basis, not the deliberation itself, and the Act did not shield authorities from "politically unwelcome results" of expert studies.

Klöckner later introduced the Nutri-Score voluntarily. On 19 August 2020 the cabinet approved her ordinance for a five-step scale from dark green "A" to red "E", supplementing the nutrition table required by European Union law. A binding national scheme was not available under that law; the ministry aimed at the widest possible voluntary use. Subject to EU clearance and Bundesrat consent, the rules were to take effect by November 2020.

She rejected a sugar tax. In May 2018, after an appeal by about 2,000 doctors, she told Bild am Sonntag that a tax was doubtful as a remedy for poor diets, that lifestyle and total calories mattered more, and that taxing ingredients was socially unfair. A balanced diet, she said, was "not a question of the wallet". Late in 2018 the government adopted a voluntary National Reduction and Innovation Strategy, from a September deal with industry. Targets to 2025 included at least 20 per cent less sugar in children's breakfast cereals, 15 per cent less in soft drinks and about 10 per cent less in children's yoghurts, plus less salt in bread and frozen pizza. Legislation was left as a fallback.

On 3 June 2019 the ministry posted a video of Klöckner with Nestlé Germany's chief executive, Marc-Aurel Boersch. She welcomed support for "less sugar, less salt, less fat in the products citizens like"; he said Nestlé had cut those contents by 10 per cent. Green floor leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt called it an advertisement, and SPD health spokesman Karl Lauterbach called it embarrassing. Klöckner described the critics as "Hatespeaker". In July the Berlin-Brandenburg media authority, after about 20 complaints, found no surreptitious advertising and no payment.

Animal welfare and agricultural reform

On 14 December 2018 the Bundesrat approved an amendment extending the deadline, due at the end of 2018, for ending anaesthesia-free castration of piglets. The government said available alternatives did not yet meet practical needs. On 3 July 2020 the Bundesrat accepted a sow-stall ordinance only with substantial changes. In the service area, permanent stalls were to end after eight years, with fixation only briefly for insemination or treatment, and group housing after weaning had to provide at least five square metres per sow. Farrowing crates were cut from 35 days to five, with 15 years to convert. The ordinance was promulgated on 8 February 2021.

A voluntary state animal-welfare label failed an audit. In March 2021 the Federal Court of Auditors told the Bundestag budget committee that the ministry had not properly costed the scheme, contrary to budget law, and that pork alone might cost the state up to €165 million a year. It recommended not proceeding for the time being, and preferred tighter statutory standards to a consumer logo.

Pesticide rules were disputed with Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD). In March 2019 the consumer-protection office under Klöckner's ministry authorised 18 products, including one containing glyphosate. Schulze's ministry called that unlawful: the Environment Agency, whose consent is required, had warned of serious harm to insects and had agreed only on strict conditions until 31 December 2019. On 10 February 2021 the cabinet agreed to protect habitats such as orchard meadows and to restrict glyphosate sharply, with a ban by the end of 2023. Schulze welcomed the package; farm leader Joachim Rukwied had called bans a threat to livelihoods, while conservation groups wanted faster action. Bundestag and Bundesrat approval was still required.

For the national use of the Common Agricultural Policy, federal and state agriculture ministers agreed on 26 March 2021 that from 2023 a quarter of direct payments would be tied to environmental conditions, and 10 per cent — rising to 15 per cent in 2026 — would move into the second pillar, for rural development, animal welfare and organic farming. Klöckner had proposed 8 per cent. Schulze said the deal exceeded the "inadequate environmental level" of her counterpart's drafts; the German Farmers' Association called the cuts painful. Farms in Germany were expected to receive about €6 billion a year. On 6 July 2021 Merkel received the final report of the Commission on the Future of Agriculture and likened the task to squaring the circle.

Crises, aid and end of tenure

The 2018 drought was the first emergency. On 22 August Klöckner classed the losses as of "national extent", the test for federal aid last used in 2003, and offered up to €340 million, the federation paying €150 million to €170 million and the Länder the rest. The farmers' association had sought up to €1 billion. About 10,000 farms were described as existentially threatened. By the end of 2019 just under €292 million had reached 7,214 holdings; Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland did not join. At a forest summit on 25 September 2019 she said the federation and the Länder would provide up to €800 million over four years, after storms, bark beetles and drought had damaged about 180,000 hectares.

During the COVID-19 pandemic she said on 17 March 2020 that food supplies were secure, supermarkets would stay open, and panic buying was harmful. With borders closed, she and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer agreed that up to 80,000 foreign seasonal workers could enter under strict health rules, allowing special flights, including from Romania, for the harvest.

Özdemir took over when the new government was sworn in on 8 December 2021. What remained were voluntary schemes, long transitions and emergency aid. The Cologne court later held that the original MRI study should have been released; the Court of Auditors had advised dropping the animal-welfare label; glyphosate, insects and the CAP shares were compromises with Schulze. Klöckner maintained that a sugar tax would not itself correct diets, and that the castration deadline had to wait on practical alternatives.

Party offices and return to Berlin

Deputy chair and federal treasurer

Klöckner entered the inner leadership of the Christian Democratic Union on 15 November 2010, when a federal congress in Karlsruhe elected her to the party presidium with 94.43 percent of the vote, ahead of the other presidium results reported from that ballot. Angela Merkel was re-elected chair at the same congress with 90.4 percent. At the congress in Hannover in December 2012 she was elected a deputy federal chair, with 92.92 percent, the strongest result among the five deputies; the CDU counts abstentions as invalid, which raises the published percentages. She held that office until 2022.

She remained a deputy through the changes of chair that followed. At the Hamburg congress, once Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was chair, the five incumbent deputies were confirmed with no opponents, and Klöckner received 86 percent. At the digital congress in January 2021 the chair was contested by Friedrich Merz, Armin Laschet and Norbert Röttgen. In the first round Merz received 385 votes, Laschet 380 and Röttgen 224; Laschet was the candidate who then had to be confirmed by postal ballot under the party law. The deputies were chosen separately, and Klöckner received 787 votes.

In January 2022 she left the deputy chair. A further digital congress elected her federal treasurer with 607 of 886 votes cast, according to party figures given to the press; that ballot too awaited postal confirmation, expected on 31 January. She said she would give up the state chair in Rhineland-Palatinate, with a state congress on 26 March to choose a successor. Before the vote, reporting noted unease that she would be responsible for corporate donations to the federal party—expected to matter more as public funding and membership income fell after the 2021 defeat—while also speaking for the parliamentary group on economic policy. She remained treasurer, and with that office a member of the presidium, until March 2025. On 19 March she said she would lay the office down at the leadership meetings the following Monday, before the new Bundestag convened, after the CDU/CSU had nominated her to preside over the house; she said the timing had been settled with Merz before the nomination.

Economic policy spokesperson

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 she stood in Kreuznach, then constituency 201, and took 29.1 percent of the first votes (39,589), behind Joe Weingarten of the SPD on 33.0 percent (44,976). The Rhineland-Palatinate executive had proposed in May that she head the state list. She lost the constituency but returned to the Bundestag on the list, and from 2021 to 2025 was the CDU/CSU group's economic-policy spokesperson. On 13 December 2021 the group elected a new executive board and its working-group spokespersons; Klöckner was named spokesperson for economic affairs.

In opposition she argued for lower industrial energy costs and against the coalition's use of off-budget funds. In October 2022, after the government announced a subsidy of 13 billion euros for electricity grid fees, she said ministers were still obliged to present a concept for a competitive industrial electricity price, because extreme power costs were putting energy-intensive firms and jobs at risk. In November 2023, after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that shifting unused pandemic credit authorizations into the climate and transformation fund breached the debt brake, she wrote that the court had set a stop sign against the coalition's "budgetary tricks."

In the snap federal election on 23 February 2025 she won Kreuznach, by then constituency 200, with 46,768 first votes (32.3 percent), 3.2 points more than in 2021. Weingarten was second on 26.3 percent and the AfD third on 21.2 percent; turnout was 81.6 percent.

President of the Bundestag

Election in 2025

On 25 March 2025 the constitutive sitting of the 21st Bundestag elected Julia Klöckner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) President of the Bundestag. Of 630 members, 622 cast ballots and five were invalid; she received 382 votes in favour, 204 against and 31 abstentions, above the majority of members required, 316. The prospective coalition of CDU, Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party (SPD) held 328 seats, so support extended beyond that bloc. Gregor Gysi of Die Linke opened the sitting as the longest-serving member willing to preside; an Alternative for Germany (AfD) motion to give the chair to the oldest member instead was rejected.

She accepted and said she would serve “stets unparteiisch, unaufgeregt und unverzagt” — impartially, calmly and without being daunted. She told members the house had not been elected to rubber-stamp the government and that ministers owed parliament an account. She succeeded Bärbel Bas (SPD, 2021–2025) and was the fourth woman in the office, after Annemarie Renger (SPD, 1972–1976), Rita Süssmuth (CDU/CSU, 1988–1998) and Bas — the first time, the Bundestag said, that a woman had succeeded another woman.

The same sitting elected the vice-presidents: Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU), 425 yes, 132 no, 53 abstentions; Josephine Ortleb (SPD), 434, 145 and 31; Omid Nouripour of Alliance 90/The Greens, 432, 156 and 22; and Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke), 318, 256 and 34, two votes over the threshold. AfD nominee Gerold Otten failed three ballots — 185 yes to 411 no, then 190 to 401, then 184 to 403 — and AfD amendments seeking a vice-presidency for every group were referred to the rules committee.

In protocol the president ranks after the federal president and ahead of the chancellor and the Bundesrat president. The rules charge the office with representing the Bundestag and directing debates impartially; the chair rotates with the vice-presidents, usually about every two hours, and whoever presides may warn a member, withdraw the floor or exclude that member for up to 30 sitting days. The president also heads an administration of about 3,000 staff, exercises police and house rights in the parliamentary buildings, and sets annual state funding for parties. By office Klöckner chairs the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, a 48-member emergency body — 32 from the Bundestag and 16 from the Bundesrat — that can act if the Bundestag cannot meet in time in a state of defence.

Conduct of the house

Her chair was marked by a strict reading of order and symbols. By the 2025 summer recess the Presidium had issued 13 calls to order, 12 of them against the AfD. She had members of Die Linke leave the chamber over a “Palestine” T-shirt and a beret, declined a rainbow flag on the Reichstag for Christopher Street Day, and indicated that political pins should no longer be worn. Greens business manager Irene Mihalic said symbols such as an AIDS ribbon were not objectionable, and former Green co-leader Ricarda Lang called Klöckner a “Polarisierungsunternehmerin”. Criticism sharpened after she spoke at a CDU event on premises linked to Frank Gotthardt, a backer of the right-wing portal Nius, and compared Nius with the daily taz; publicist Albrecht von Lucke said the appearance breached the neutrality expected of a new president. Klöckner rejected guilt by association over whom she met, and said that not adopting the programmes of Die Linke or the Greens neither curtailed free speech nor ended her neutrality.

In early June 2025 she wrote to Michael Meister, a CDU minister of state in the Chancellery, that the government bench was at times “only very thinly occupied”. She said the groups and the Presidium considered at least two federal ministers necessary at each sitting, and asked for a standing ministerial presence under Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

On 16 October 2025 the Bundestag recast its rules of procedure, described in the coalition motion as still largely those of 1980; the CDU/CSU and SPD voted for the text, the AfD and Die Linke against, and the Greens and Stefan Seidler abstained. The published rules set a fine for a more than slight breach of order or dignity at 2,000 euros, or 4,000 on repetition, including automatically on a third call to order within three sitting weeks. Three calls in one sitting mean exclusion for the rest of that sitting, and a vice-president can be removed by a motion of at least one third of members and a two-thirds majority. Klöckner later said this was the first overhaul on that scale in 45 years, because personal attacks and speeches staged for short clips were displacing argument.

In a September 2026 general debate she twice rebuked AfD interruptions of Merz, saying the chamber was not a football ground and threatening removal. She said the AfD had drawn the most calls to order and Die Linke the next most, and that if a group systematically stopped others being heard she would “throw the whole parliamentary group out”. She added that every group, including the government when the bench was too empty, was liable to be called to order. On 15 October 2026 vice-president Lindholz fined AfD member Martin Reichardt for telling a woman member of Die Linke, “Sie mit Ihrer Unkenntnis über Ihre eigene Klitoris.” He appealed, calling it a factual reply to her earlier use of the word. The next day the house rejected the appeal, with the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke for rejection and the AfD against. Klöckner said such disrespect would not be accepted, noted that only 32 per cent of members were women, and said disrespectful speech about women would draw an immediate call to order.

Political positions

Agriculture, economy and social policy

As federal minister of food and agriculture, Klöckner treated stricter animal-welfare rules as a question of price. In June 2020, after Jochen Borchert's commission recommended a levy on animal products, she said "meat is too cheap," backed the levy for rebuilt barns, and said meat should be neither a luxury nor "everyday junk goods" if farmers were to improve housing.

As economic-policy spokesperson of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, she said in December 2024 that the Scholz cabinet had "massively endangered" stability through "ever more state" and that its "guided economic policy" had failed. In June 2024 she called for less bureaucracy, competitive energy prices, lower taxes and stronger work incentives, and for repeal of the national supply-chain law as an unrealistic burden on medium-sized firms. After a €13 billion subsidy for power-grid fees in October 2022, she said Berlin still lacked a concept for a competitive industrial electricity price and that jobs at electricity-intensive firms were "massively endangered." In September 2024 she described the citizen's income (Bürgergeld) on Deutschlandfunk as incentivizing not working rather than work. She defended the constitutional debt brake against borrowing equal to investment. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 13 December 2024 she called it protection for later generations; even with it, she wrote, the 2024 and 2025 budgets envisaged about €100 billion in new debt, while interest spending had risen tenfold from 2021 to nearly €40 billion.

On abortion she defended section 218 of the Criminal Code—an offence, but not punished in the first twelve weeks after mandatory counseling—as balancing a woman's self-determination against the unborn child's right to life under the Basic Law. On 10 April 2024, after Der Spiegel reported that a government commission would recommend making early abortions lawful and ending compulsory counseling, she called reopening that conflict "incomprehensible and irresponsible" and did not rule out a complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court. Friedrich Merz had already asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz to stop the plan. She left the Bundestag in 2011 and returned only in 2021, so she cast no vote when it opened marriage to same-sex couples on 30 June 2017. In May 2015, as CDU deputy chair and a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics, she called a church blessing for registered partnerships "not an imposition, but human," and said that people who take on duties for one another must also receive rights. In 2022 she wrote that she was open to gender-sensitive language but avoided asterisks and similar marks, and that words such as Mitarbeiter did not, for her, mean only men.

Europe, foreign affairs and the churches

In June 2024 she argued for a "deal for competitiveness" in the European Union: climate targets that did not outrun "facts and physics," less regulation, and a balance of ecology, economy and social questions, plus de-risking of security-relevant economic ties with China. On migration she followed the Union line that inflows had to be limited. In September 2023 she told Welt that Germany was highly attractive to migrants "because we pay the most."

On her first visit to Israel as Bundestag president, in February 2026, she went with Knesset speaker Amir Ohana to Yad Vashem and said Germans stood before "the darkest chapter of our history." Solidarity, she said, did not exclude "critical accompaniment among friends." She opposed restoring the death penalty, urged better humanitarian conditions in Gaza, held to a two-state aim of peaceful coexistence after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, and said she was ashamed of rising antisemitic offences on German streets. In October 2026 she told Stern that a ban on the Alternative for Germany should not be started "from the gut": the hurdles were high, failure could make the party a "martyr," and she left the decision to the parliamentary groups.

A practicing member of the Catholic Church who studied theology, she has argued that the churches should not act as another non-governmental organization. In April 2025 she told Bild am Sonntag that a comment on a 130 km/h speed limit was "not necessarily what I pay church tax for," and that during the COVID-19 pandemic the churches had missed a chance to offer more pastoral presence. At the 2026 Katholikentag in Würzburg she said such statements would not draw people in, that the church was "sometimes too quiet" on people with disabilities, and that some AfD positions were hard to reconcile with the Christian view of the human person.

Personal life

Julia Klöckner grew up on her family's wine estate in Guldental, a wine-growing municipality on the Nahe in the Bad Kreuznach district of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Bundestag biography records her as Roman Catholic. Public detail on where she lives has stayed limited to that regional tie: in 2025 reporting she was described as a Rhineland-Palatinate native who spent time in her rural Bad Kreuznach constituency.

Before her marriage she had a long relationship with the media manager Helmut Ortner. In 2017 she met Ralph Grieser, managing director of a vintage-car centre in Mülheim-Kärlich, on the "VOR-Tour der Hoffnung", a charity bicycle ride for children with cancer and their families. They married on 20 April 2019 in a small ceremony among friends in South Africa. The Rhineland-Palatinate Christian Democratic Union said only family and close friends had been told beforehand, and that the couple opened a donation account, for children with cancer, families in need and vocational training for young people in Africa, instead of accepting gifts. A church wedding followed on 7 September 2019 at the Catholic church of St. Martin in Guldental, attended by about 300 guests.

In August 2023 their lawyer, Christian Schertz, told the German Press Agency that they had amicably and jointly decided not to continue the marriage, that they and their families would remain connected, and that their privacy should be respected. Later reporting described Klöckner as divorced from Grieser.

In August 2025 the news agency dpa and Bild reported that she and the television presenter Jörg Pilawa were a couple; both declined statements and interviews about the relationship. Der Spiegel, citing those accounts, wrote that they had met through acquaintances at a celebration in Guldental, that Pilawa, a father of four, had lived apart from his wife for about three and a half years, and that the pair were regularly together in the Bad Kreuznach constituency, where the families already knew one another. On 3 October 2025 they appeared together at the central German Unity Day events in Saarbrücken, sitting in the front row beside Chancellor Friedrich Merz at an ecumenical service in the Ludwigskirche. A later Spiegel profile described the relationship as deliberately low-profile, without interviews or photo series.

Outside party office, the Bundestag biography lists voluntary roles concentrated on welfare, hospice care and a small number of foundations. She is recorded as a member of the Atlantik-Brücke, of the members' assembly of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and of the Weißer Ring; as a member of the board of trustees of Plan International Deutschland; and as chair of the board of trustees of the Caritas foundation Mittelpunkt Mensch in Bad Kreuznach. The same biography names her as patron of the support association for the Christian hospice movement's outpatient services and as a member of the support association of the Eugenie Michels Hospice in Bad Kreuznach, together with other regional civic, wine and rural associations.